Sonic Squad: Keys to the Present
by Coleiosis
Summary: Christopher meets his old self, as well as Dr. Eggman meeting his as well. But it's all supposed to be part of the big evil plan that Eggman is devising, having to do with his powerful Roboticizer.


Sonic Squad: Keys to the Present

By Cole Bezotte

That same night that Christopher Thorndyke had added the bullet-proof layer of fur to Shadow, he had received a strange phone call from a certain someone. Once he answered his phone, he heard a familiar voice speak from the other line.

"Yo! Chris!" the voice spoke up. "Nice to hear your voice! Listen: if you happen to have bumped into a black hedgehog, that was Shadow. I need him back here with me so that no one can track him down and assassinate him. Find him and bring him to me. Thanks! Bye!"

After Chris hung up his phone, Shadow, sitting on Chris' workshop table in the distance, asked him: "Who was that?"

"That," Chris answered, "was a guy I met on a bus. His name is Luigi, and he's one of the famous Mario Bros."

"I know him!" Shadow said, surprised. "He's the one hiding me from the authorities. He's a good friend, isn't he?"

"Certainly. But we can talk about this on the way to your hiding place." But before Chris could do anything else, his phone rang again. He picked it up and began to hear Luigi speak again from the other line.

"Hello?! Chris, are you there?!" Luigi exclaimed.

"Yes, Luigi. I'm here. What is it?" Chris replied, knowing that by the sound of Luigi's voice that it was an emergency.

"Whatever you do, don't bring Shadow back to my motel room! The staff has already tracked Shadow by watching the recordings of the security cameras! The hotel can no longer allow Shadow over here! So what you need to do is keep Shadow over there with you. Keep him there until I arrive. I'll be there shortly, if I can survive throughout this traffic jam."

"I read you, Luigi. I'll keep him here with me. I understand the change of plans." Chris hung up his phone and heaved a worrisome sigh.

"What happened?" Shadow asked him as he sat there on Chris' workshop desk.

"I'm gonna have to keep you here, Shadow," Chris replied. "There's been a slight change of plans. The hotel you went to finally knows that you went there. But it's a good thing that you're already safe here."

"That is a good point." Shadow remained silent for a long while as Chris went to a new invention that he had just now finished.

"I hope this baby works perfectly," Chris said to himself as he went over to it. But before he could touch anything, he saw a spark go off, indicating to him that there was already something wrong that happened. "Easy there!" he exclaimed as he shut off his invention. He started to walk across the table and look around wires of his invention. "What's going on here? Everything looks set, and yet there must be a short-circuit somewhere."

But as he went along the wires, he bumped into somebody, shorter than him, and almost fell to the floor. "Oh! Pardon me," he said as he turned to see whom he had hit. But it only took him a matter of a split-second to realize who it was. He recognized mostly the face, then hair, and the outfit. He had now come face-to-face with his past self, from when he was twelve years old. "What the—" Chris stuttered to speak as he saw his younger face.

"What?" Young Chris said as he saw his older self, very confused. "How do you know me?"

"I… I know that face. It reminds me of over six years ago."

"How can it? I was too young back then."

Chris smiled as he turned to face Shadow and was about to tell him what was going on. But Shadow was not there anymore; somehow he had now gone off to who-knows-where. "Where did he go?" Chris thought out loud. "I've got to find him."

"Find who?" Young Chris asked after hearing what his older self said.

"Shadow," Chris replied. "He was here a second ago. I'm keeping him here for safety, so that the authorities don't find him and eliminate him. I say he's as innocent as a normal-living man."

"That was quite brave of him," Young Chris came in, "when he saved Earth from being destroyed by the space colony A.R.K."

"How heroic of him. I hate to see him leave like that. I must go find him immediately."

"But… who are you?"

"Would you believe me if I told you so?"

We will come back to the two versions of Christopher Thorndyke in a moment. For now, let us turn our attention to the evil mad scientist Dr. Eggman, who has now completed his objective from our last story. He laughed evilly as he pulled the correct switches to activate his powerful Egg-Timer. "Now for the fun part…" he spoke up as the machine was finished with the process, "…to meet myself! This is going to be one heck of an evil scheme!"

After the process was completed, Waluigi came back from spying on the Mario Bros., as he entered the secret cave. "How are things going?" he spoke up, taking off his coat.

"Fine," Eggman replied. "Just fine. I'll leave you to get acquainted with my sniveling little nephew here."

Waluigi bent his tall body down as he greeted Snively Robotnik, Eggman's sneaky nephew. "How do you do, partner?" he said as he shook hands with Snively.

"Don't listen to my bad old uncle," Snively replied. "He's one heck of a nutcase."

The Egg-Timer had now finished its process of bringing someone from the very mysterious past of Mobius. Eggman watched as the main hatch opened, and out stepped his old self, back when he was known as Julian Ivo Robotnik. "Eh?" Julian spoke up as he looked around the lab. "Where am I? What am I doing here? Where is that hedgehog?"

"Greetings, Julian!" Eggman said as he greeted his old self. "Welcome to your future!"

"Who are you?!" Julian demanded. "And what am I doing here?!"

"Please, Julian. Let me explain. You see, I've brought you here for something very important. Please, tell me about your Roboticizer."

To keep this new plan that Eggman has as an anonymous secret, we now go back to Chris and Young Chris (we shall now call them). Everything has now been explained, Chris telling his younger self about what the heck was going on in the present time. Young Chris was very excited to hear about the story when his older self went to the Brooklyn Ball Park, met Luigi, and exposed Dr. Eggman of his robotic arm.

"That's really neat," Young Chris said after hearing all that. "But what's with all these wires and bolts lying around my grandfather's workshop?"

"That's what you'll be doing when you become my age," the adult Chris replied. "It'll be all amazing science that will blow your mind! How cool is that?"

"Wait a minute! Where's Shadow? I thought you wanted to look for him."

"Right!" Chris said as he snapped his fingers. "I clean forgot about him for a moment there. We should be going to find him."

They took off to exit the lab and soon came across the hallway of the Thorndyke Mansion. As they walked along, Young Chris looked up at the wall and noticed a picture of his older self and Helen, the future wife. "Is that Helen?" he asked aloud, surprised about who was in that picture.

"You are correct, little one," adult Chris replied. "Later on in your life, she will be your wife. In this case… she is already my wife… and..." He found himself confused with what he was saying, because he was talking to his past self, and could not say which one was the real case. "Okay. Let me put it to you this way: she is a student in Mr. Stewart's school class, along with you. So if I were you… well, I already am you, congratulations. Anyway, I would already say to her that I like her. It will be the thing that will speed up this relationship."

"Come to think of it," Young Chris said, "I already sort of like her."

"Good. You can get an early start then." But their talk, and their search for Shadow, were cut short when they heard a bumping noise in the workshop. The two guys turned and immediately went to where that noise came from.

"What was that?" Young Chris asked as he went along the trail. "Could that be Shadow?"

"Or maybe it's Dr. Eggman," adult Chris replied in suggestion. "Let's go find out and see." Once they arrived back at the lab, they right away noticed two obese men leaning over the main table. "Our suspicions are correct," Chris continued as he pointed the two "Eggmen" out. "It's Eggman!"

"But who's that other fella with him?" Young Chris asked.

"I don't know," adult Chris replied. "But I'm not waiting around to find out."

But Chris spoke too loud; in only a split-second, the two villains turned to see our two heroes sneaking up on them. "Aha!" the modern Eggman exclaimed. "So you thought you could be a little sneaky, eh? Well, here's a little cold-shoulder treatment for you!" With that, he quickly pulled out of his pocket a miniature pistol. He squeezed the trigger with an eager finger, firing a special freezing chemical out of the gun. The chemical surrounded Chris and… well, Young Chris and solidified a cube of ice around their hands. The ice cubes were so heavy that the two Chrises (sigh, this is difficult) fell to floor, unable to move their hands or lift them off the ground.

"Ah," the past Julian spoke up as he approached the helpless captives. "How unpredictable; there's already two of you, and yet I don't yet know you."

"But you will in the future," adult Chris replied. "Or, more accurately, YOUR future. By the way, who are you?"

"I am the real Julian Robotnik. I am whom you call Eggman."

"This is incredible!" Chris said, not caring about the situation going on, in which case Eggman was up to something evil. "Never before have I seen such a time warp like this! I wonder who could have caused this fantastic reaction!"

"Why should you care? After all, you're all bound up and nailed to the floor. You can't get off the ground at all!"

The present Eggman, off in the distance, barked at the chatting men: "Be quiet all of you! Now that I have what I am looking for, I may finally put my plan into action! Thank you, Julian, for giving me the keys to the roboticizer! Now go! Your purpose has been served!" With that, Eggman drew a remote out of his pocket and aimed it at his past self. Then, with one press of a button, the remote completely removed the past Julian from the sight of the present time. He was now back in his own time, in the past, no longer remembering what had just transpired.

"Now I have it!" the present-day Eggman exclaimed in excitement. "I finally have the keys to my Roboticizer! Now I can finally put my plan into action! What I plan to do is quite simple. I soon realized that the Chaos Control accident that happened a few days ago actually made a big collapse with Earth and Mobius. It brought the two planets together into one big realm! And, now that I have the keys to the Roboticizer, I can roboticize the entire planet and transform it into one big machine! Oh, I'm so evil I can cry! But enough of that! I no longer have a purpose to use with the Egg-Timer, so I can now erase your past self, Christopher. Begone!" Eggman pointed his remote at the young Chris, now not remembering about what had just happened.

After the adult Chris watched his younger self fade away back to the past, he turned to see Eggman who was now exiting the Thorndyke Mansion. "Well this sucks!" he thought to himself as he watched the mad genius walk out. "I gave Ella and Tanaka the night off; I should have put more security down here. Ah, what a bust. Poor Shadow, in a cake of ice… Say, where is Shadow?"

But, right at that moment, Sonic came rushing into the lab, eager to see that his old friend is still alive. "Need a hand?" he spoke up as he placed an electric heating-pad on Chris' icy hands.

"Sonic!" Chris exclaimed in excitement. "I've never seen you in years!"

"The same goes for me, pal. I guess Luigi was right; he did see you that day."

"He definitely is right. But I don't want to talk about that right now. There's something very dangerous going on!"

"Spill it, and I will attend to it right away!"

"Listen closely: Eggman just realized that Earth and Mobius are now one and the same world! Our two worlds merged together!"

"Your home and my home all put together?! That's a fantastic feat! I must…" Sonic stopped to think for a moment, his mind going wild about a surprising idea that had just struck his head. "If Mobius and Earth are together now, then that gives me an idea! I will go confront and confront Eggman right now and maybe, just maybe, I can find my old friends from years ago: THE KNOTHOLE FREEDOM FIGHTERS!"

**NEXT TIME: SONIC WILL GO TO SETTLE A SCORE WITH DR. EGGMAN, AND ALSO REVEAL A SHOCKING TRUTH!**


End file.
